Red Sox fans ecstatic, exhausted

Like thousands of other sleep-deprived Red Sox fans, Jackie Polito of Abington couldn’t wait to get home from work Monday to finally catch a good night’s sleep.

Sue Scheible

Like thousands of other sleep-deprived Red Sox fans, Jackie Polito of Abington couldn’t wait to get home from work Monday to finally catch a good night’s sleep.

She made sure not to have more caffeine after her two regular morning cups. She didn’t take a nap. She didn’t exercise after dinner and turned in at her regular bedtime of 9 p.m.

It paid off. Polito felt more alert Tuesday morning than she has in weeks, and that was a good thing. As nurse manager of the sleep lab at South Shore Hospital, she is expected not to doze off on the job.

Larry Anzuonicq of Plymouth is also a huge Red Sox fan.

“I had a different reason for staying up so late,” he said Monday at Brush Hill Tours in Randolph, where he is company president. “I had to line up the buses to pick up the team at Logan Airport and get them over to Fenway Park Monday afternoon with a State Police escort. … We were waiting to find out when they would come in.”

After he found out the details at about 1 a.m. Monday, “I had to reach the drivers and then I slept a few hours – it’s all a blur,” he said, “But it’s what we do.”

If Red Sox fans are still dragging a bit today or even Wednesday, Polito said they can expect to feel more normal in another day or two.

She described the typical effects from staying up until 2 a.m. Monday with her husband and children Michael, 16; Marc, 15 and Jackie, 12; calling their oldest daughter, Alex, 20, at the University of Connecticut; and then getting up at 5:45 a.m. to rouse them for school.

“My eyes feel scratchy. I don’t have the energy today. I really just want to get home and get to bed.”

Sleep is so important, she said, but “most of us don't get enough of it, and teens are the most sleep-deprived of all. All our schedules are so demanding. Our lives have exploded with technology, and we are all on overload.”

Still, she added: “My whole family would have stayed up five nights in a row if we had to. It was something we weren't going to miss – even though each morning, all the alarms kept going off and going off, as people hit their snooze buttons.”

That’s 92-year-old Bill Spencer of Braintree, who soon turns 93 and always stays up for the final out. His son, Ted Spencer, is chief curator at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y.

“Everyone is all excited,” DeThomaso, 68, said yesterday, as he finished trimming the elder Spencer’s hair. “They have been lovingly complaining for days, saying they will be glad when this is over so they can ‘sleep right.’ I call them complaints of joy.